Brother Dearest
by IThinkIllScratchGrounder
Summary: Edward Hodges never displayed much interest in the sleepy town of Silent Hill. So why was his body found there, and why does his sister find herself inexplicably drawn to the place, six months after his death?
1. Fog

I had a brother, once.

He died.

My brother's name was Edward. He was a big, gentle, man, the kind of person who's strong enough to easily push others around, and yet nice enough to know not to.

He drew comic books for children, the _Excellent Adventures _series. Maybe you've heard of them. In fact, you probably have. They were really huge a few years back. He made...I'm not quite sure it was millions, because of some licensing issues, but it was a load of money, anyway. Then, one day, he packed it all up, and drove off, without telling anyone.

His body was found, in broad daylight, on the streets of a large town somewhere in Maine. His throat had been cut. The official verdict was suicide.

The name of the town was a name I'd always known, although only then did it take on any significance to me. Silent Hill.

I mourned for my dead brother, I wept for him. Life continued.

At least, until he came back.

* * *

Everyone has their own way of dealing with loss. Some people turn to drink, or drugs, some take out their anger on other people. For me, it was routine. After Edward's death, I slowly settled into a funk, going through the same motions each day like clockwork. Wake up, have breakfast, go to work at the library in Brahms, come back to the apartment, have dinner alone, maybe a read a book or two, go to sleep. Day in, day out, that was my life, occasionally punctuated by the odd meeting with my few friends or, if I was feeling particularly daring, a trip to the cinema.

In part, I think this came from my naturally anti-social disposition, but, mainly, I was just that determined to prove a point. Or, shit, I don't know. I can't psychoanalyse myself. I barely even know what I was doing then anyway. It sure as hell wasn't anything that can be classed as 'living'. I know earlier I said that 'life continued', and it did. I just wasn't much of a part of it.

It'd been another nondescript day in the thrilling life of Essie Hodges when it started. I climbed the stairs to my homely apartment, on the third floor of the building, bags of shopping weighing me down. I was thinking nothing much in particular about anything, except maybe which easy microwave meal to prepare myself for dinner. So it came as a surprise to me when my front door wouldn't open.

I had stuck the key in the latch, and turned clockwise, as normal. But there was no click, to signify the retracting of the mechanism, and it remained locked. I tried again, but still there was nothing. Frustrated, I placed my shopping onto the ground, in order to focus more on the door. Maybe I'd got it wrong in a moment of ditziness. Maybe it turned counter-clockwise. So I tried that, and to my surprise it turned that way as well, but still with no click. It was as if someone had somehow gutted the locking mechanism, not quite removing it completely, but doing just enough damage to keep the door firmly shut permanently.

I frowned, puzzled. It was probably just another cock-up on behalf of my landlord, Mr. Reed. The old bastard had just been too cheap to buy a proper lock, that was all.

Leaving my shopping outside my room, I set off down the stairs, ready to give Mr. Reed a piece of my mind.

The stairwell seemed cold, colder than it should've been. I shivered, and before I could stop myself I had sneezed all over my hands. Shit. It was _definitely _colder than it should've been. And I'd left my jacket in the apartment. I soldiered on, regardless.

As I reached the ground floor, I noticed something else odd. Where were the usual drunks, the addicts that lay sprawled around the stairwell as if it were some kind of second home? In fact, where was anybody? I hadn't seen a single person since I'd entered the building, although considering the kind of people who usually hung around the area, I was too busy taking it as a blessing to consider that maybe something weird was going down.

I located Mr. Reed's office, next to the elevators, and rapped on the door sharply. There was no reply. It was very unusual for Mr. Reed to ever leave the fortress he considered his rudimentary office to be. Was he ignoring me? I knocked on the door with more force this time. Still no reply. Irritated, I thumped the thing, and it swung open with unnatural ease. The locks on this door were bust too?

Inside Mr. Reed's office, things became even stranger. The entire room looked as if it'd been hit by a hurricane, and I'm not exaggerating. It was like the entire destructive force of such a deadly storm had been focused into a single small point, an epicentre that just happened to be my landlord's office.

The desk was split in half lengthways, with each of its drawers removed and summarily shattered by some unknown assailant. Mr. Reed's prized stacks of legal documents, as well as pages of what looked to have been a manuscript he'd been writing, weren't just scattered across the room; they were literally _everywhere_, even, impossibly, on the damn ceiling, and most of them looked to have been scrawled across with thick black marker fluid. The window was broken, naturally, and the shelves of military miniatures seemed to have been taken off of the walls and simply smashed against each other into a tangled mess of painted plastic and wooden splinters.

I stood there and stared for I don't know how long. Reed had never been the most amiable of people, but he wasn't the sort of man stupid enough to make enemies. At least not enemies who were capable of things like this.

"Mr. Reed?" I called, in the foolish hope that maybe he was just buried, unconscious, beneath the debris, and would rouse himself at my voice. But that didn't seem too likely. Anyone nuts enough to be _this _thorough on a single room surely wouldn't let their assumed quarry leave alive.

It was then that I noticed something. Although the bulk of the paper had at least some marker fluid on it, there were a few scraps that seemed to be missing, as if they were holes in a jigsaw puzzle. I looked up again at the paper on the ceiling, and then back at the paper on the ground. There was something more to this. Then, it clicked; there were patches and holes on the ceiling where there was paper on the ground, and vice versa.

It was a ridiculous idea, but the situation almost seemed like some kind of puzzle...I sighed. Edward had always loved puzzles like this. If he were here right now, he'd know what to do. But he wasn't, and so I set to work, as stupid of me that might seem. But the set-up was just too perfect.

If I could move the ceiling papers onto the floor, I was sure I would have a completed message. I cleared some of the other debris from the floor, and thought. Maybe some of the pieces not arranged in this meticulous pattern would suffice for filling the gaps. I leafed through them, and, sure enough, some of them were identical to the ones on the ceiling.

It took me at least a good fifteen minutes of going through piles of marked paper, but eventually I found what looked to be the correct ones. I placed them on the ground, glancing up at the ceiling pattern to make sure I was doing it right, and then, sure I would have some kind of an answer, like in a bad detective story, I stood back and looked at the completed message. It wasn't very neatly written, and the letters were almost an illegible squiggle, but after a few seconds I got it:

**OUT **

Although this situation was still utterly surreal, I could sense the urgency behind those letters, and I knew just when an order was an order. It was like some great supernatural presence was shouting the word at me so loudly it pierced my skull and echoed around my head. I dutifully left the room, and that was when the shit _really _began to hit the fan.

Mr. Reed was lying in the middle of the lobby, splayed out like some kind of gigantic starfish. His limbs were outstretched in a position no corpse could've possibly held unless it had been placed that way, and on his face was an expression of what looked to be dreamy contentment. There was a gaping red hole where his stomach had once been, and his intestines were wreathed around his corpse like morbid garlands.

That was when my calm, lucid mood was shattered like a house of glass. Oh, God, the stench! I fell down onto my knees, scuffing my palms on the plastic floor, and promptly began to gag and retch. I tried to suppress the urge to vomit as much as I could, but I couldn't stop myself from expelling my breakfast straight onto the floor.

I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, and tried to calm down. Whatever was going on here was serious, and if I didn't _oh god fucking shit someone's murdered reed and next it'll be me jesus i don't like this i want to go home oh edward where are you please oh god i can't cope this is too much_ the sound of a slap echoed around the lobby, and I took a long, deep breath. I. Had. To. Stay. Calm. Be logical, be detached. That was my thing.

I lifted myself up. Ok. So Reed was dead. And, it seemed, someone had wanted me to see it, judging by the message in his office. They must've placed the corpse there while I was rearranging the papers. So where were they now?

That didn't matter. What did matter, in my mind, was that I got the fuck out of there as soon as possible. Something incredibly messed-up was going on here, and I didn't want to be a part of it, no sir. Cross my name off of the list, Mr. or Mrs. Murderer, I'm outta here, no more games for me.

Trying as best as I could to ignore the earthly remains of Mr. Reed, I practically ran to the main entrance and forced open the doors, exiting as hurriedly as I could.

Of course, then I began to think that maybe it'd be safer inside. The reason? I couldn't see a damn thing. Thick white fog enveloped everything, and I could only make out vague shapes at a distance of anything more than a metre. I recalled a novella I'd once read with similar fog, and suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable. Slowly, uneasily, I proceeded through it, in a direction I knew lead to the nearest bar. I had just seen a man with a hole in his torso the size of a cannonball and his guts wrapped around his body. I needed a drink, badly.

I'd only gone a few metres, not even enough to reach the other side of the road, when I heard a noise.

A voice. A human voice. Only, it wasn't. Too deep. Too quiet. I froze in place, afraid to move, and then, again, I heard it. Like a distorted hiss. Again. There it was. It was saying something, vocalising some phrase. But what?

As I stood there, glued to the spot out of terror, I heard it again and again. Like some kind of demonic snake. But there was a human quality to the sound. It _was _saying something. I gulped. I _really_ needed a drink now. It grew louder, slowly, and I could almost make it out, or a single word of it, anyway. _Essie._

I suddenly didn't care what the fuck the voice was talking about. I sped across the road, blind panic taking control, and then I didn't even know where I was going. The fog had disoriented me, but I sure as hell didn't want to stop and converse with the mystery voice, so I kept on running blindly, praying for this damn fog to end, for things to start making sense again, and then _oh god edward please come and help me i dont know what to do i dont care how just help help HELP HELP HELP-_

I was airborne for a brief second, and then I smacked down against the tarmac, hard. I lay there for a good few minutes as I tried to get my brain back into gear, unnerved just as much by my own sudden panic attacks as by the ghostly fog. I sat up, slowly, and to my dismay the seemingly omnipresent fog was still there, its sheer presence exuding an aura of tension. At least the mystery voice had gone now. That was a plus.

I looked back. I'd tripped over a roadblock in my frantic retreat, it seemed. It was now lying sideways a few metres away, its black and yellow stripes looking faded and dated. I still needed a drink.

I stood up, and tried to get my bearings. I'd landed pretty close to the sidewalk, and could just make out 'McKee's Parts and Repairs' on my right hand side. From what I knew, that meant I was on Edgar Street.

Forget the bar, I'd decided. The time had come to forget Brahms altogether. Whatever the hell had happened here, it could sort itself out. I walked over to the nearest car, an old Ford. I knew nothing about hotwiring cars or anything like that, but...I'm not entirely sure what I was trying to do. Either way, I never did go any further than that, because, then, I heard another noise.

This wasn't a sinister voice, however. This sounded jolly. Singing. It was unbelievable, but amidst all this weirdness I could hear singing! People having a good time! I was as close to overjoyed as you can come under such circumstances.

It wasn't English. I could tell as much, even with my limited experience with other languages. It sounded...German. German singing? In New England? Unlikely, I knew, but I also didn't care much. The thought of other people, and maybe safety, was enough to cancel out all other doubts.

It was coming from a building just behind the Ford. 'Curly's Tavern' was emblazoned on the front in large letters. I couldn't believe my luck. Human company, and alcohol? It was everything I need to get over today.

Without thinking, I practically skipped towards the entrance to the building and almost threw open the door, thinking, to hell with this fog and whatever other shit happens, I can just stay here and drink my way through the madness.

I don't need to tell you that I was catastrophically wrong.


	2. Demon

The bar was completely empty.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" I said aloud. What the hell kind of trick was this? I was sure, no, damn certain, that there had been singing going on in here, and there would need to be people who could do the singing – or would there? I thought back, somewhat reluctantly, to the voice I'd heard outside, and shuddered.

But now there was no sound coming from anywhere within the bar. Literally. There wasn't even the slightest hint of any background noise, and although compared to outside I should've found that a relief, really, I was more worried about any bogeymen that could be lurking. Freddy, or Jason, or whoever.

The bar was dimly illuminated by a dying light bulb hanging naked from the ceiling, and the appearance of the place was the exact opposite of the encouraging, warm locale I'd expected. Although it was far from Mr. Reed's windswept office, there was still something unnerving about this place that served as a link between the two. Here, however, rather than looking as if someone had ransacked the place, it looked like no one had ever bothered to do _anything to it_. There were inches of dust covering everything, every surface and wall. Yellowed newspapers were scattered, unread, around, like they'd been there for years. Somehow, it didn't feel like passive neglect, as if the owners had just forgotten about the bar and left it to die, but more like someone had actively encouraged, no, forced Curly's Bar to fall apart, crazy as that sounds.

And yet I'd been here just the other week. Curly's had never been abandoned, not for even a minute. Curly had been someone I'd been on good terms with, and the bar was his livelihood. He'd never have let it get like this, and anyway, even after a week no place looked as neglected as this. This was like no one had even set foot in the place since the Twenties.

With my nerves jangling and my rational mind screaming at me that this was impossible and stuff like this shouldn't happen and that I should get out, I instead began to explore, hopeful for maybe some clues, maybe a newspaper headline that foreshadowed some impending disaster I had missed. I checked one of the nearby papers, but it was no use. It was dated the 20th of March, 2005, and the headline was a simple one about a local political scandal. In the back of my mind, I knew the 20th was an important date for some reason, but it escaped me just then. I was too busy wondering what, exactly, a six-month old newspaper was doing here. Like I said, I'd been here recently, and there sure as hell hadn't been any old newspapers lying around.

Granted, there could've been a rational explanation, like maybe an esteemed collector of old newspapers had visited Curly's just after I had, but given the surreal day I'd had so far, that didn't seem likely. Then, finally, I got it. The 20th of March. The day Edward Hodges' body had been found in Silent Hill. My brother. I felt sick at the realisation. There was no way that date, on this paper, was an accident. Whatever the hell was going on here, it seemed vehemently personal towards me. I felt another panic attack coming on, and suppressed it as best I could. If I lost myself here, then....then...

Behind me, on the bar's surface, I could hear a hissing. High pitched and constantly fluctuating in tone and volume. It sounded _alive_.

I almost leapt straight out of my skin there and then, so sudden was the noise, and I span around wildly, knowing I'd encounter some kind of demon, or a psychopath with a jagged knife, or...

No, it was just a radio. Relief swept over me in waves. And, now that I listened to it, it was just static. I laughed, humourlessly, mainly to try and get myself back off of the teetering brink of insanity I'd just been balanced on. I picked up the radio. It was one of those handheld models, with a battered red casing and a pair of broken dials. Unlike everything else here, though, it was almost entirely dust free. Had someone placed it there while I'd been turned around?

The static became louder, and more urgent. The hell? I shook the thing, but it was obvious now that it didn't even have any batteries inserted. At least that explained why it was so light. I tried tinkering with the dials, despite knowing they were broken. I was mighty curious as to what this radio was, exactly. The static died down for a brief moment, and thank God it did, because otherwise I likely wouldn't be here today. During the lull, I heard another noise.

It was a metallic tapping noise, and I'm sure if you've ever known anyone who had to get around using crutches you'll recognise it. That semi-rhythmic tapping as whoever's using them struggles to get around. And whoever this was sounded like they were having a hell of a struggle. Thump-tap-thump-tap-tap-tap-thump. It was irregular, and out of time, like they were trying to run.

At that noise I hurriedly clipped the radio to my shirt and looked around, terrified.

Where it had come from, I had no idea. The only way in and out of the bar was via the front door, and it sure didn't look like it was in any state to open any doors. It was humanoid, but not like any person, or hell, any animal I'd ever seen. Its flesh was disgustingly greasy and mottled an ill shade of green that suggested some kind of horrible nausea. It was wearing clothes, to a degree, but nothing more than the tattered remains of what looked to be army fatigues, and in places the garments seemed to meld right in with the thing's diseased body. The head was just a lump, an ovular mass of mould and flesh that twitched in time with the movement of its limbs. Oh God, the limbs. The legs were withered and weak-looking, and dragged behind the rest of the monstrosity as it hobbled. The arms were fused to long, metal constructions that looked like rust-coated, jagged crutches.

It moved forward uncertainly and awkwardly, somehow maintaining balance on just those two metal struts. Moved forward towards _me_. Shit. I began to back away, all of my attention focused on the Lovecraftian demon slowly hobbling towards me. It was making noises now, long, low, strangled cries, the kind that you instinctively want to respond to with help and aid, but that didn't mean I trusted it. Not by a long shot.

I turned out to be bang on the money as a tendril, long and barbed, whipped out from the folds of the creature's exposed ribs and slammed against the area of the bar I'd just been standing in front of, cleaving a long divide in the wood. I thought of what that would do if it hit me, and felt the onset of another panic attack. Wildly I grabbed around for something, anything to hit that sack of flesh and metal and smash it and break it and reaffirm some kind of link to reality, however tenuous, because I couldn't deal with that thing even existing at the same time as me. My hands closed around a rusty steel pipe, jammed violently into a table, and I pulled at it with all my strength, willing the damn thing to come loose. The crippled monster 's tongue-like tendril lifted into the air, preparing to slice downwards at me, and seized by panic, I tore the pipe from its resting place and brought it down onto the creature's mossy head. _Thwack_.

The monster gave another feeble help-me cry, but I wasn't listening. I slammed the pipe into its head again and again, denting and malforming it beyond its already hideous shape. Fuck, it was taking ages to die! Again, again. _Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. _I was like a woman possessed, laying into the thing, unloading every frustration and every moment of terror I'd encountered so far onto it. Finally, whatever kept the thing's head stable yielded, and it burst like a grape, spraying brain matter and blood all over me. Dead, the monster's body fell to the floor.

I took a deep breath. I took several deep breaths. I gulped air like a madwoman, and I still couldn't calm down. What the fuck. None of this made even the slightest iota of sense. Sure, I'd seen horror movies. Lots of them. But most horror films at least try to adhere to the basic laws of logic. This was something so far removed from normality that I couldn't even comprehend just how fucked-up it was. I looked down and noticed the chunks of monster still stuck to my clothing. Shit. I was seized by a sudden desire to tear my shirt off just to get that crap off of me, but I resisted. The smell was terrible, a mix of the odour that'd lost me my breakfast back in the lobby and food that's been out-of-date for years.

For once, I was at a complete loss. Where could I go from here, then? Outside could have swarms of things like the one lying headless on the floor in front of me, but inside was no more welcoming, and the corpse didn't exactly help matters. Then I remembered the mystery voice, the one that had somehow known my name, and the matter was decided. No way was I dealing with _that _again.

I turned away from the monster's body, trying desperately to suppress both the urge to vomit and an oncoming panic attack. I noticed something else on the bar's surface that I hadn't earlier. Next to where the radio had been, there was a flashlight. I picked it up, incredulous. It worked, as well. Who in the hell had put that there? Was someone going ahead of me, preparing each area as they went? The idea gave me the shivers, so I tried to dismiss it, but even then it lurked at the back of my mind, refusing to go away.

Even stranger, someone had written something on the bar. In the same thick black marker-pen writing as the message in Mr. Reed's office, it said, barely legibly, **BACK DOOR**. I gave a brief 'ah' of understanding. Of course. On the second floor of Curly's Tavern was a flat, owned by...well, I had no idea who owned the place, but it was apparent that whoever had arranged this Lovecraft tribute party wanted me up there. And who was I to argue? I was still terrified and way, way, out of my depth here, and going with the flow was all I was really capable of. Maybe there would be more horrors upstairs, maybe not. All I knew was I didn't feel like up to thinking rationally and planning my next move carefully at that point.

I made my way to the back door, tucked just to the side of a garish pinball machine, and slowly pulled it open, my heart pounding like a jackhammer. There was no light in the corridor it opened to, but I supposed that was what the flashlight was for. I turned it on, the steel pipe in my free hand, and began to wander down it, my nerves so on edge it was a wonder I hadn't had a heart attack yet. Yes. There was a staircase here, and it led straight to my destination. Ignoring the route to the left, which was distinctly lacking in anything besides a foul-smelling garbage bin, I proceeded up the staircase.

I was a few steps up it when I heard that noise again. Thump-tap-thump-tap-tap-tap-thump. And then that pathetic asthmatic gasp. I pivoted around, and – what the fuck? – there was another one of those monsters, in front of me. Where the hell had it come from?

It unleashed that spiky tendril from its chest, and, in no mood to fight, I practically flew up the stairs, my legs nearly buckling as I hit the landing. I teetered precariously for a moment and almost fell straight back down, but I thrust my weight forward at the last second and merely banged my head on the wall. I looked back at the monster, having a hell of a time with the stairs, tendril waving madly. If I'd have fallen, then...deciding not to think about it, I yanked open the door to the second floor flat and left the Crutch-monster to circumvent the stairs by itself.

The flat looked very similar to downstairs, what with the dust everywhere and pervasive feeling of neglect, but I wasn't discouraged. Well, I couldn't afford to be, because then I might just give up and beat _myself _to death with the steel pipe.

Then I took a step into the room, and reality decided to play another fun little prank on me. I took a step into the room, and then it was gone.

It wasn't an instant transition. One second I was there, standing in an abandoned-looking flat in the town of Brahms, and then the walls began to run. I am not exaggerating; as if the walls themselves were painted on, they ran and dripped and leaked into the floor, which in turn slowly dissipated, like someone had pulled a hidden plug and allowed them to go down the drain.

I remained remarkably calm while all this was happening. I couldn't believe it was, and I really mean that I _couldn't_. It would not sink in, that the room itself was disappearing and fading before me. Rooms don't do that. It's a general rule of reality.

But then I was somewhere else entirely, and the rules of reality lost all application. The ground was hard, and muddy, and the scenery....there wasn't any. Fog, nothing but fog in every direction for God knew how far. Ok, ok, ok. Fog again. I was in a room, but now I'm not. I didn't have to think about the why. But it had happened.

If it was now part of the rules, loosely defined as they were, that rooms could be replaced with foggy countryside on a whim, then what the hell else could happen? How else could logic be shat all over?

I didn't want to think about it, but maybe I could prepare myself. But then when I thought about it my head began to hurt and dozens of untoward, ridiculous yet nonetheless terrifying scenarios popped into my mind like maybe I would end up as a monster crawling on bladed crutches and wheezing awfully or maybe I would go mad and _no no no i don't want any of this to happen please let me out god why the hell do i have to do this doesn't make any sense fuck Edward please come help me PLEASE_

I was in the foetal position. I didn't remember ever having even moved, but apparently I had. My eyes were wide, and my hands were clutching my knees so tightly it began to hurt. Fucking panic attacks. If that happened here again, all was lost. But my body didn't seem to want to work. I tried to stand up, but I couldn't. I tried to move my arms, but I couldn't. I couldn't even groan. I was paralysed.

_MOVE, you dumb bitch! _I screamed at myself, internally. There could be more monsters out there, and I still had some will to live. I couldn't just sit here waiting to die. So I forced myself up, and tried to rationally assess the situation.

It didn't work, of course. Everywhere there was fog. So I could just as well wander in any direction and see where I ended up. That was an absolutely fucking stupid plan, I admit, but it wasn't as if I could come up with anything better.

So, throwing logic to the wind, since I didn't think I'd have much use for it on this nightmare-inducing misadventure, I set off, forward, to see what would await me once I got out of the fog.

If anything.


End file.
